


Salt

by Comatosejoy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Drama, F/M, Romance, Running Away, Sexual Content, Suicide mention, some dark elements, violence mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:55:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24041698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comatosejoy/pseuds/Comatosejoy
Summary: Temari is eighteen when Rasa gives her hand in marriage to an old Daimyo. Risking the wrath of their father, Gaara and Kankuro help her run away in the dead of night. She hides on the edge of a desolate sea, where hardly anyone passes through and no one stays. It is there, passing through on a mission, that Shikamaru encounters the missing princess.
Relationships: Nara Shikamaru/Temari
Comments: 29
Kudos: 84





	1. Chapter 1

Had she been lucky, she would have been born ugly. Simple, too. Or perhaps a combination of both. Had she been born ugly and clever, suitors would not gather for her as they did. Perhaps she could talk her way into getting put into a convent. Escaping from there. Had she been simple and beautiful, they would gather and she would beam at them, not understanding that they offered her father gifts for the opportunity to build new cages for her, to make her a broodmare that bore heirs. 

No, these were not the lucky options. Luck was to be born a boy. Ugly or beautiful, simple or cunning, chaste until death or fucking his way through the palace’s servants--had she been born a boy, all of that would be inconsequential. 

Lucky had been her brother Kankurō, who did not resemble the pretty features of their mother, as she and her youngest brother did, and earned the two resentment from their widowed father. Allowed to practice his strange jutsu, paint his homely face as he wished, never worry about disliking whatever wife they gave him. Rules were quite different for men. Though, he’d be expected to have a child with the wife, whether or not he liked her. So she supposed he wasn’t lucky, either. 

What was luck, anyway? Was it when she caught her littlest brother, Gaara, in a happy mood? Or when she walked into the main hall of their palace to find that the Kazekage had been called away for days at a time? Was it when weak-willed suitors came to visit her, who could be turned away by a mere glare? 

No. Luck would have been being born far away from here. Luck looks like grass and moss and trees, not the endless sand that becomes scrubland in her village. Luck looks like her strength. It looks like the spirit her father is, mistakenly, sure that he’s already beaten out of her. Luck looks like her maidenhood, a condition that she took a gamble over often. Each time, she would roll the dice, and another maiden would gladly lay in bed with her, running a delicate finger or two through her slickness, making the princess sing and cry. She would wake up in the morning, still a maiden, her luck as intact as her virginity--for both were not real.

________

Temari is sixteen years old when the suitors begin to subside. Fourteen was her marrying age. At fifteen, more than a hundred men came to her. She’d been lucky. That year, Orochimaru had tricked them, and she and Kankurō her father and Gaara--now soft and kind--stood trial in Konoha. Her father, Rasa, had not had time to think of domestic issues like who to marry his daughter off to. They all pledged their allegiance to Konoha as penance, and the true villain was declared an enemy of all shinobi. To be killed on sight. 

The suitors came less and less. They suspect, perhaps, that her magical, mythical virginity is gone. And though they are wrong in every sense, she eyes servant boys, because she wants to get it over with. She wants whatever they think exists between her legs to be gone. Give them another reason not to offer beautiful scrolls and beaten gold and kunai that can only be displayed and not thrown for her hand in marriage. Let her be too old, no longer a maiden, with a tongue that is too sharp, and a gaze that is too piercing.

Of the men who still pursued her, she looked for the weakest. She could rule the household, maybe even the kingdom, then. And it was a titan of a prince from Bean Jam country. Weak-willed man, weak country. A man who ate more than his fill, who trained clumsily. Her grace was even more apparent next to him. She shone like the sun and the stars next to his sloppiness. Her slender wrists, her low and honeyed voice, her shining golden hair, and her precision were all amplified by his unworthiness. She asked to travel to his country with him before she officially agreed to accept his proposal. She knew it had been a stupid idea. She knew she would back out after spending longer than a millisecond in his company. Perhaps that is why she did it. 

He had tried to sneak into her chambers. The guards had let him in. He was the prince, after all, and he commanded them. And he’d taken many women. But as he laid beside her, his stupid, huge, callouses hands fumbling around on her simple yukata, she felt like folding in on herself. She wished to be swallowed whole by the bed she laid atop of. The place between her legs remained dry as a bone and she could feel his foul breath, see his ugliness up close. 

She grabbed his wrist, large and tan. Wrists like a farmer’s instead of a prince. 

“I do not want this,” she said, expecting him to hurt her right then. Or try, at least. She’d expected him to claim her as his wife regardless. 

The man was kinder than she had given him credit for. In her loathing she had not seen the tenderness in his actions. She did not see the gentleness he intended and she realized that his wrists looked like a commoner’s because he worked among his people. He was a good man, indeed, and any woman would have been lucky to have him. But she was not just any woman, and mediocrity would not do. 

After she declined him, he sent her home accompanied with stories for her fierce maidenhood. It made her virginity, which she did not believe to exist in the first place, a prize to be won. It renewed the suitors’ interest in her. 

And so she is eighteen when it is said that she lost it. It isn’t true, of course. But truth is subjective. Truth is whatever the citizens of Suna believe. So, despite what Temari knows is fact, and despite being beautiful and witty and well-bred besides, she is given to the Daimyo of Claws as a fourth wife. To be a concubine to an old man is a fate worse than death, made worse by the fact that these smaller countries hold fast to tradition. When he dies, she will not be permitted to remarry. She will be expected to mourn for the rest of her days, however soon he dies. 

The Daimyo is not coming himself to collect her. Why would he, for a fourth wife? He sends, instead, one of his adult sons, guarded by a team of Konoha chunin, to collect her. They are to arrive in two weeks, and the dread makes her restless. Kankurō is furious. In another life, he would fight it. But Rasa has them beaten down like dogs. Gaara just watches her in that quiet way of his, and she cannot guess at what he is thinking. 

She chastises herself for not marrying that prince in Bean Jam country, for thinking there would be better and brighter opportunities in the future. Like someone drowning, she reaches out to grab anything that will keep her above the surface. She pores over old laws--surely there is a loophole somewhere, surely something that will save her. She considers running away, but all her allies are allies of Suna, and running away makes her a traitor. Where would she go? 

By candlelight the night before the men are set to arrive, she is nearly tearing her hair out. In a fit of desperation, she presses a kunai to her own throat, daring herself to press it into her skin. When she feels the sharp, cold point pricking her skin, she gasps and drops it. Of course it would be interpreted as a death intended to restore honor to the family, and she has done nothing dishonorable. To die would be to admit guilt. 

She hears her door creak open and she tries to steady her breath. Had they heard the clatter of kunai on the floor? Had she screamed without realizing? She turns. It is Gaara. He frowns at the drops of blood that run down her neck. It is nothing, though. She barely broke her skin. 

“Come,” he says, and she does. Her mind is blank as she stares at his back. She would follow anyone anywhere in that moment, knowing the alternative. 

They meet Kankurō outside of the palace. “The guards will be busy for the next hour,” he says mischievously, and she guesses he’d slipped them a laxative or something equally juvenile. Juvenile but effective. 

They travel by foot until they are far out of sight, and then Gaara summons sand to take them the rest of the way. Their destination is far, he explained, and he and Kankurō have to make haste to get back before dawn. Though they’d be suspected regardless of what they did. For that reason, they could not come to visit her. Not for a year, at least. 

Kankurō had packed her a bag, all clothing of his. It wouldn’t fit her properly. It’d be too tight on the hips, too big on the shoulders. She rolls her eyes but understands why he did it. So nothing of hers would be missing. It would muddy up the trail; people might suspect her kidnapping. 

Things do not stop feeling surreal as they approach their journey’s end. She smells it before she sees it.

________

The Shio Sea sits directly above a fault of two plate tectonics which grind past each other and cause the earth to quake regularly. Calling it a sea is a misnomer; though the water is saline, it is not connected to the ocean. In fact, it exists hundreds of klicks inland in Wind Country. 

The whole body of water, though massive, is stagnant and stinks of rotting fish. The stench is made worse by the merciless heat. Sixty-odd years ago, some rich man had had the infinitely stupid idea to build a resort town on the edge of the sea. The skeletons of the failed venture dot the beach: dilapidated buildings, abandoned carriages, and two businesses that remained open despite the desolate nature of the area: the tavern and the inn. Shinobi traveled through on missions sometimes, and it was the only spot to rest for hundreds of kilometers. 

“You may have a job at the tavern, if you wish. I have arranged for it,” Gaara says, opening the door of a cottage. Calling it such is generous, for it is more of a shack, and when she peers inside, she sees that it is sparsely furnished and everything is covered in a thin layer of salt. This is a good omen, she thinks. Salt is often used to purify locations, and the fact that it is so deeply imbedded in everything that exists here bodes well. Not that she is superstitious by any stretch of the imagination. 

“If I wish,” she repeats, still dazed by all that has happened. 

“Call me crazy, but I love it,” Kankurō says, running a finger through the coating of salt on the dinner table, and tossing her bag down. She cannot contain her snort. She considers this place, with beaches so white that they glared under the moonlight, with dead fish collecting at the shoreline, with hunks of salt-covered rust and rotting wood where buildings once stood. Of course her brother likes it. It’s as weird as he is. 

Before the men leave, they attempt clumsy goodbyes. Have they ever been a sentimental family? There is love in their hearts but it does not so easily come out in their words and stiff hugs. How do you tell your sister that you love her? They already had by bringing her here. By defying Rasa. If there ever was a moment for tears, it would be as they leave her. But no one cries. It isn’t what they do, in Suna.


	2. Chapter 2

The first night, Temari does not sleep. She is certain that the guards of Suna are hot on her trail. She flatters herself, not realizing how far public opinion of her has fallen. The heat is stifling even before the sun rises, when the world is supposed to be at its coolest. She opens every window, and the breeze coming off the sea cools her home. It also makes it smell like mud and dead fish. 

She dresses after the sun rises and steps into the world. As she approaches the edge of the water, she wonders if she will stop noticing the smell, as people who live next to the rapids of a river cease to hear the water tumbling over stone. Her feet crunch unexpectedly over the ground and she glances down. The white along the beach was not sand, as she assumed, but the skeletons of millions of fish. She shivers at the strangeness of the place. 

The second day Temari wakes up, alone in that shack, she licks her lips. Salt. She turns to her side in her bed roll and feels grit against the exposed skin of her arm. Next, she notices the sweat on her lower back and forehead. It’s too hot. Unusual for Suna this time of year. And the smell. She shoots up, the events of the previous days hitting her as the kunai hits a target.

In the following days, she wonders if she had made a mistake, coming here. As if she had had much of a choice. Her father’s palace, under strict scrutiny, the Daimyo’s palace, where she’d live only to be used, and here, where at least she was not watched or forced. All of the options were cages in one way or another, constructed by circumstance. 

But she isn’t being held against her will here. It’s not as though anyone stops Temari from walking away from the Shio Sea, and yet she does not allow her legs to move further than a few hundred meters from its shore. Not that she would survive without having a destination and friendly places to stop. There is an unforgiving expanse of brush and sand waiting to kill her. The strange trees, which do not grow as north as Suna, look like the gnashing teeth of a monster begging her to make a break for it, just to devour her limbs. 

But as the weeks pass, the trees again look like trees. She walks among them, thinking about how foolish she was for believing it would be anything other than dehydration and heat exhaustion that would kill her. _How easily a stick can look like a snake_ , she thinks as she surveys the sharp, ugly landscape. _It is not so scary out here._

But the opposite is true, too. Shinobi sometimes travel through on missions and she clenches her fists under their gaze, terrified that they might recognize her. They ask for her company when she serves them drinks at the tavern and she declines even the handsomest among them, thinking they might be a spy sent to collect her. _How easily a snake can look like a stick_ , she thinks as she watches a pretty team captain from Kumogakure captivate his squad with a story. He winks at her, and she keeps her eyes down, wiping tables with a sudden passion. 

She adopts a disguise out of either caution or paranoia. She dyes her hair a deep chestnut, knowing that a jōnin seeking to harm her could recognize a henge from a mile away. Her worries are not altogether unfounded. 

Temari learns that she is a missing-nin the same way she gets all her news. Shinobi come through with their drunken gossip, always telling half-truths and spreading rumors. 

“I heard she killed all the ANBU in the palace with a single gust of wind.” 

“Well, I heard she learned genjutsu in secret and put the entire village of Suna to sleep.” 

“She murdered anyone who stood in her way.” 

“No, she seduced anyone who stood in her way.” 

And finally, she is added to the Bingo Book. The rumors are distilled into a narrative and announced by the Kazekage. It was poison, not a single gust of wind, that killed the ANBU. She had had a florist deliver bunches and bunches of a certain desert flower. The plant, though beautiful, is toxic. She ordered her servants to grind its petals, its branches, its leaves, until she had a deadly paste.

She snuck into the ANBU barracks, being a jōnin capable of such a feat, and laid the poison throughout the living quarters. Not leaving anything up to chance, she brushed it on the rim of every glass and the bristles of every toothbrush. 

From the shadows, she watched the ANBU become sick. They had all shit themselves, vomited, fell over and writhed and seized until their hearts gave out. She left, then, in the night. 

“It’s so stupid,” she says to her brothers when they visits her, a year later. “Who would know that I stayed and watched, if everyone but me in the room died?”

She admits that it makes a compelling story, though. Temari, spoiled princess of Suna, does not go out and gather the plant herself. She does not grind it herself. The only thing she does herself, like any bloodthirsty villain, is commit the murder and bask in the agony of her victims.

“It was a terrible death for them,” Gaara says quietly, and Temari gasps. Of course Rasa had been thorough. Wouldn’t people notice if the ANBU hadn’t actually died? Guilt sluices over her. Her freedom came at too high a price. Had she known, she never would have left.

“He knows we helped you,” Kankurō says, more solemn than she’s ever seen him. 

“He does not like that he did not have his house in order. It makes him look weak,” Gaara adds.

“So he’s taking it all out on you.” Kankurō punches one of her chairs in anger. It comes apart, all sawdust and splinters, and he mutters that he’ll make her a new one. 

She doesn’t look at either of them. A woman without her virginity is one thing. A woman who defied fate, putting Rasa in a potentially embarrassing situation on her way, is another. What’s worse than a whore, afterall? A disobedient whore, of course. 

In the fourth year of her exile, the reward for her capture diminishes considerably. There have been no sightings of her, and she will be declared dead soon. She keeps her head down, works in the tavern, flirts with shinobi that she does not take to bed, and she walks alone in the blistering, ruthless desert. She has free time to read, to explore the abandoned, rotting buildings, and has found a friend in the tavern’s owner, an old woman named Yui who does not ask questions about Temari’s past. She likes her life. It is simple but it is hers and hers alone. 

Perhaps it is Kankurō’s sense of the dramatic rubbing off on her, but she starts harvesting that plant she allegedly used to kill those dozen-odd ANBU. She cuts off branches and puts the twigs with the beautiful flowers in a vase on her table. She plants them in front of her house. They bloom in white and every shade of pink. It’s strange, how something so beautiful can cause so much suffering.

________

It has been hours of running in breezeless, unmerciful heat before he smells it. It is carried by a wind, though, so Shikamaru is caught between a sigh of relief and a gag of disgust. The pleasure of coolness against his cheek, sweet as a kiss, draws him in. The stench of fish and death and salt repels him.

But he knows his team must stop there. They haven’t once stopped in a village the whole mission through, and they are out of water and military rations. And they all need a drink. The assassination on the western coast of Wind had gone poorly. It was a messy affair; there were factors that had not been accounted for in his strategizing. The target had not died swiftly, and Shikamaru bemoaned his subordinates having to witness it. 

The youngest among them, a boy who’d just made jōnin at only fifteen, had thrown a shuriken intending to slice the man’s jugular. The boy had been pushed, just as he threw, by a chambermaid of all people. Her death, though Shikamaru would have spared her, was at least fast, and executed by one of his more experienced shinobi. The shuriken had cut only a part of his vein, and as the team fought the men around him, the target bled slowly and painfully. He was still alive, watching with cloudy eyes as his team finished off every last soul. They approached him, and he asked for death. It would have been begging, had the man had the energy. Shikamaru looked away in distaste as his subordinate, mercifully, finished him. 

“I’m sorry,” Shikamaru had said. He wasn’t sure if it was to the boy whose aim had been shifted at the last moment, to his team as a whole, to those that had guarded the man, or to the target who lay at his feet.

He sent a letter to the Hokage that, at their next rest stop, they would have to take at least three days off. The youngest had never seen death before. And the second-youngest had never seen a man ask for it as a kindness. How recently was the war, yet how long ago? At only twenty, he feels a powerful generational divide. But that was the future he had decided to build, isolating though it was. A future where the children of Konoha do not need to know what it feels like to walk through blood-soaked dirt and pray that at least one of your friends makes it out alive. 

When they arrive at the Shio Sea, he guides his team to the tavern and swings the salt-encrusted doors open. To the youngest he says, You can have _one_ drink. And he tenses up, because he hears honey, low and thick and sweet, say, “I’m sorry, I can’t finish my shift.” 

Were he not the man who could remember everything about everyone, whose vast mind did not _allow_ him to forget things, he would have ignored it. Maybe he would have ignored it had it been anyone else he’d once known. But that voice had haunted his dreams, once. 

He hadn’t heard it since Rasa had hosted the chunin exams. She had been eighteen and he fifteen. She seemed a thousand times better and more interesting and divine than he could have ever been. Every night during those exams, he’d dream about crushing his lips against her shoulder. And then, in his dreams, he got hungry. He had had that taste of honey and fruit and something else and he was insatiable. His mouth had to taste every dip and swell of her, and when he had woken up, covered in sweat, he’d been relieved. That way was madness, and he did not care to be driven mad with lust or longing. He certainly didn’t want the thing that would drive him mad to be a woman. 

And it didn’t matter, in the end. She’d snapped, they said, just like Itachi Uchiha. Slaughtered ANBU in cold blood. There were chinks in the armor of the story, though, and after the news of her treachery broke, he’d turn the tale over in his mind, trying to make sense of the flaws. Temari didn’t have servants. Poison was too subtle for someone like her. She never used poison before. Why would she start now? 

But the fact that no sightings of her were ever reported had made him draw the wrong conclusion. He had thought she’d been killed and it had been covered up. His eyes are careful to avoid her but not quite careful enough. For a split second, the shock of seeing a woman he had assumed to be dead is plain on his face, and he is sure she knows he’s seen her. He does not drink that night and sleeps in his own room at the inn, as a team captain can. He expects her visit, and isn’t surprised when he feels the cool blade under his neck.

She could have slit his artery and had it over with. Instead, she clears her throat as if to wake him. He figured she wouldn’t do it. It’s why the long shadow, provided by the light of the moon, creeping close to her arm does not reach out to stop her. 

“I won’t say a word,” he says. He does not open his eyes. He knows what that green of her eyes looks like, and if the feeling brewing deep in his belly is any indication, looking at her might be more dangerous than the knife on his throat. There is that madness again, the likes of which he had avoided for years. The women he takes on dates never give him goosebumps, never cause his heart rate to skyrocket. And he likes it that way. It makes it easier to think. 

“I can’t take that risk,” she answers, as though she is trying to convince herself. It is hearing that honey again, up-close and soft, that makes him twitch under her, and he knows he must redirect himself lest his building arousal become noticeable. 

“So why haven’t you done it yet?” Shikamaru asks, knowing that the annoyance in his voice might be his undoing. Was daring a woman to kill you better than having her accidentally feel your erection digging into her? _Yes,_ he decides. It at least preserves his dignity. He hears a frustrated groan and suddenly the pleasant warmth of her thighs straddling him, softer than he’d imagined, is gone. He opens his eyes. She is nowhere. 

Stupidly, he looks out his window, as if he’d catch her retreating. He nearly takes himself in his hand at the ghost of her legs around him, but resists. That way is madness, after all.

The next day, he sees her standing on the shore. She’s facing toward the waves, and he lets himself watch her back for a few minutes before gathering his courage and approaching her. He chastises himself for his ridiculousness. Of all the things to make him tremble, why her? Of all the reasons why his mouth might run dry in this godforsaken desert, why would it be because of a woman? A part of him, the sane part, tells him to just consider himself lucky that he hadn’t wound up fighting her the night before. That he shouldn’t approach her. And yet his feet carry him forward. 

“Thanks for not killing me,” he says, and then cringes and the stupidity of it. He wants the earth to swallow him right there. 

“The day isn’t out yet, Shikamaru Nara,” she answers, not turning to look at him. 

He feels a strange pleasure at hearing her say his name, and decides not to give that part of himself any attention. That could work, ignoring it until it goes away. He and his team need to only stay for three days to rest, after all. And then he’ll never see her again. He can go back to pretending she’s dead. But he aches at that thought. The first time, when she’d disappeared, the story had been so obviously false to him that he had been more frustrated than sad. 

He had seen Gaara a year after Temari had gone, and carefully offered his condolences, hoping to coax out even a hint about the situation. 

“Ah,” the Suna prince had said. An infuriating response if there ever was one. It told him nothing. The entire family is maddening. 

Suddenly, he feels irrationally angry. Damn this woman, who came back from the dead, who made him tremble. Damn her green eyes and the thighs that had rested on either side of his hips the night before. A sudden dislike for her leaps from him. He feels it in his chest and tastes it, bitter, on his tongue. Troublesome woman, who could brush him off so easily. He’d felt grief, privately, thinking she had died. And here she is, perfectly fine and equally as poised. 

He wants to tell her as much and more. He doesn’t know what it is about her that trips up his planning, his strategies. Though he’s twenty now, grown into his body and past his awkwardness, his limbs still feel too long around her, his tongue feels too large and clumsy in his mouth. He fears his voice may crack. And his old temper rears its ugly head, too. His mouth is halfway to forming angry words he won’t be able to take back when she turns and looks at him. 

He swallows the words like one might swallow bitter medicine. The look in her eyes is at once vicious and pleading, and he can’t guess what she’s thinking. She could be coiled like a viper waiting to strike. The knife held under his chin last night is proof of that. But she looks like a supplicant, too. Like she might beg him for something. His silence? His help? Slower than he should have realized, it occurs to him that she is just as at a loss as he is. 

“I know you’re a curious man,” she says after a long silence. “I think your being here will haunt me for the rest of my days. I’ll think, _will he tell his wife?_ and _how long until letting him live kills me?_ ” 

“I don’t have a wife,” he says, and hates himself for it. That hadn’t been the point she was making. 

“You will,” she says. She says it with both casualty and certainty, like how one might say that the sun will rise tomorrow or the Shio Sea will continue to stink. 

The sun is growing higher in the east, but he knows his team will not be up for hours yet. Even the youngest had had too much to drink, despite Shikamaru’s orders. But they’d earned it, and they had a few days to rest besides. 

“I’d like to ask you some questions. In return, you can ask a few of your own,” Temari says, walking away from the shore. 

Like a fish on a hook, he follows behind. It is like a compulsion. She goes, he follows. And he can see it unraveling in front of him: she asks, he answers. She orders, he obeys. She says Jump and he asks How high. Madness. He doesn’t care for it one bit. 

She leads him to a house. It’s smaller than most he’s seen, even on missions in poorer villages, and he realizes with a start that there are oleander bushes in front. The same plant she allegedly used to kill her comrades. She lets him inside. There is a bed to his right, and a kitchen and bathroom to his left. In the center, there is a kitchen table with an oleander sprig in a vase. _Is this a fucking joke?_ he thinks, sitting down and staring at the pink blooms. 

“Would you like something? Tea? Coffee?” 

He doesn’t answer. For a moment, he second-guesses himself. Had the story been true, afterall? No, if it had been, he would be dead by then. Unless he was being toyed with. A thousand possibilities lay themselves out in front of him. 

If he is poisoned, she will have to clean his bile up off the floor and get rid of his body. Then she’ll have to come after the rest of his team. There are better ways to kill him, less labor-intensive and cleaner. It would be best to make his death look like an accident. That way she wouldn’t have to come after his team. But that begs the question: what could accidentally kill someone who is always ten steps ahead of everyone? 

“You may ask first,” she says, deftly pulling things out of her cupboard. 

Shikamaru feels his hands coming together in a familiar pose and nearly squats down. As if his mind hadn’t been racing with questions since the night before. As if he hadn’t laid awake last night after she left, thinking of all the things he’d like to know. But he did not know how many questions he was permitted. And he certainly didn’t want to waste one asking. 

“Why did you come here?” He senses that she is pleased that he did not ask about the massacre first. 

“I didn’t have many options,” she says. “I was to be wed to an old man. My brothers brought me here in the dead of night.” 

Her tone is almost clinical. She doesn’t put any emotion into her words. But her answer raises more questions. Gaara and Kankurō were involved. The three of them as a team used to be a powerhouse. They certainly didn’t need tricks like deadly poison. It would have been obvious to everyone close to the situation if her brothers had helped her. 

But that’s treason, punishable by death. And both Gaara and Kankurō are very much alive. Though it probably wouldn’t look good for the Kazekage if his daughter defected with the help of his two sons. He’d have to make an example out of them, and then he wouldn’t have an heir. What kind of ruler can’t even maintain the allegiance of his children? 

All the pieces click together in his brain. He sucks in a breath of air. 

She sets down a cup of tea he didn’t ask for like a challenge. _Take a sip_ , he can imagine her saying in that pleasing voice of hers. He maintains eye contact as he lifts the cup to his lips and drinks. The gesture speaks volumes. _I trust you, I believe you, I know you_ , it says. He thinks he sees her release some tension from her shoulders. Her eyes are a little brighter. 

“Is my father in good health?” Temari asks. Her voice is small, though the question, itself, is enormous.

Suna is Konoha’s closest ally, though the war had made allies of all the nations. Shikamaru had worked hard for an enduring peace, and his choices here could either continue to secure that peace or sever it. He imagines all that he had worked and sacrificed for crumbling around his feet. He imagines the world being brought to its knees by a pretty girl. Those are his words, _pretty girl_ , and he knows it’s belittling and mean as soon as the thought rolls through his head. 

The truth is that Rasa is not in good health. People whose identities revolve around death and blood do not greet peace like a friend. Rasa had been cruel to even his own people before peacetime, but now that things are quiet, he listens for noises that are not there. He’s gone mad with paranoia, accusing people of treason at the smallest slight.

But what is Shikamaru doing, sitting in front of a missing-nin with no active plan to kill or capture her, if not committing treason? The punishment will be severe if he is caught. But it won’t be any more severe if he tells her the truth. They can’t execute him twice, after all. 

“I suspect he won’t be ruling much longer. Five years, tops,” he says. 

She furrows her brow. “Ten years away from home is a long time.” 

“It’s a long sentence for a crime you didn’t commit.” 

There it is: the thing neither of them had truly acknowledged. Does speaking it give it power or take its power away? Shikamaru doesn’t know, but he can almost see her vulnerability after the words leave his mouth. There is a tenderness in her eyes as she looks at him. It’s gone in an instant, replaced with that fierce edge he’s always been fond of. 

Temari glances out the window. The sun is high in the sky now. 

“It’s nearly noon. I have to open the tavern,” she says. “We can finish this conversation later.” 

“My team will be awake by now. I told them to meet me there. They wouldn’t recognize you, but if you want to walk separately, I understand.”

“You had a lot of confidence that I wouldn’t kill you,” she says idly. “Making plans for the future like that.” 

He can’t help his smirk. “I’d like to think I’m a decent judge of character.”

________

His team is standing in front of the doors of the tavern. They squint at the sun, too bright for their taste after a long night of drinking.

“We’ve been looking for you,” says a petite kunoichi as Temari and Shikamaru approach. 

He stops in front of them, but she continues on, pulling a key out of the wrappings around her breast and opening the door. 

“If you want a meal, you’ll have to wait until I’ve taken the chairs off of the tables and the cook has shown up,” she says, disappearing into the tavern. The thick door closes behind her. 

“Did you fuck the waitress?” It’s the oldest shinobi she hears. He’s a burly man and his voice is warm and jovial, but low enough that a civilian wouldn’t overhear. Especially through these walls. But she’s no civilian.

“That’s inappropriate, Haru,” Shikamaru answers, his tone final. Temari smiles as she sets things in place. She had forgotten how funny it is to press his buttons. 

“The boss fucked the waitress, everybody. Act accordingly,” the man named Haru says, teasingly. 

“Annoying,” Shikamaru says, and she can tell, under that stern tone, that he’s fond of the man. 

“You folks can come in now,” she says, opening the tavern door. Really, she wants to check if he’s blushing. He’s not, of course, but his brow is furrowed slighting. 

The four shinobi sit at the bar, and Temari busies herself getting their water and continuing her opening procedures. 

“I got word from Lord Sixth that we are all to rest here for three days. When you return, you’ll all be psychologically evaluated by Ino Yamanaka.” 

The youngest two groan, but Haru claps him on the back. “Did you get the cute one to evaluate us just for me? I can’t have Ibiki poke through my brain again.” 

“Kakash-- _Lord Sixth_ chose Ino because Ibiki had a similar complaint about you,” Shikamaru jokes. 

“What would Ino think of looting?” Haru asks, pulling a bottle of shōchū out of his bag. 

Temari glances over to the man, holding the expensive bottle proudly in his huge hands. She had been royalty, once, and she’d never tasted anything so lavish.

“Did you take this from the target?” Shikamaru asks. His tone is unnervingly even and he takes the bottle from the man’s grasp. He studies the label. 

“Well, he wasn’t going to drink it,” Haru answers. Ah, that gallows humor. Temari had missed it, but being away from combat for so long had soured her liking to it. Now, it just sounds ghoulish. 

But she has no right to judge. She’d done much worse under Rasa’s thumb. She’d even liked it. She had looked down on shinobi like Shikamaru, who wrinkle their noses at unnecessary killing. She’d been cruel and grisly, just as bad as Gaara except she didn’t have the excuse of having a monster inside her. Well. Not a literal monster, anyway. 

When she had been a little girl, she’d learned about an ancient civilization in present-day Wind that believed that the spirits _wanted_ blood. It’s what they used for nourishment. You had to shed blood to feed the gods. So when she had assassination missions before she’d even gotten her first period, and she watched her target bleed, she reasoned that somewhere, a spirit was happy. 

What a fucking joke. Those spirits would be gorged with the way the shinobi world works. She knows what she wants to ask Shikamaru next. _Do we still make murderers out of our children? _But given that there’s a boy sitting at the counter on Shikamaru’s team, it seems like the answer is a veritable _yes_. Suddenly, going back to that world sounds like the worst thing in the world. __

__She had come here to escape an arranged marriage, yes, but with Shikamaru sitting in front of her, she realizes that she had escaped worse in the process. Was being the mindless wife any better than being a mindless killing machine? The night she’d arrived here, she had decided that the salt was an auspicious sign. It purifies. She has spent five years now on herself. She has spent five years getting tougher, being more independent that she had ever been allowed to be in Suna. Five years without blood. Five years purifying._ _

__The edge of Temari’s lip twitches down and she makes eye contact with Shikamaru. They share a look of disapproval, so quick that even the shrewdest observer could miss it._ _

__“I’m confiscating this,” he says. “Don’t tell a captain that you’ve stolen from a target again.”_ _

__“Oh no, you’ve taken the only bottle I lifted from his cellar,” Haru says, sarcasm dripping from his words._ _

__“Good. I’m glad you stole one bottle only, and I won’t have to confiscate anything else,” Shikamaru answers. She likes the way he handles his subordinates. He endears and reprimands at the same time. It’s smart. He doesn’t tell Haru not to steal, he tells him not to be braggadocious about it._ _

__

__Some shinobi have a talent for taijutsu, some for fūinjutsu. Some can wield weapons like an extension of their bodies. Shikamaru’s talent, what he can wield, is his mind. Exceptional shinobi often radiate power. They’re ostentatious. Shikamaru, by contrast, is unassuming, sitting here in her tavern, talking to his subordinates easily._ _

__She feels something strange springing through her, and chews on the feeling. It’s not sad, though it’s not exactly pleasant. It’s not sexual, though it could be if she thought about it long enough. It hurts and heals in equal parts and she decides she hates it._ _

__The door opens, and Yui enters along with the cook. The older woman’s eyes widen at the customers. It’s rarely this full this early. It’s so hot, sometimes, that shinobi don’t come out of the inn until dusk. Some of the braver ones try to swim in the brackish water. You can smell them from a mile away._ _

__“So, what is there to do around here?” Haru asks, leaning in near-conspiratorially as Temari refills his water._ _

__“Do you like dead fish?” Temari replies. Shikamaru tries not to smile. She doesn’t wait for an answer, continuing her work._ _

__Haru turns to the tavern owner. “Are there any girls around here? We’re staying for three whole days.”_ _

__“Just Ayatori,” she says, gesturing at Temari._ _

__“What kind of name is Ayatori?” It’s the youngest asking, and he slaps a hand over his mouth as soon as he says it, realizing his rudeness._ _

__“The kind your brothers give you,” Temari says, wiping the counter near Shikamaru, and lowering her voice enough that only he could hear._ _

__“When do you get off?” Shikamaru asks. He isn’t careful with his voice like she had been, and she sees Haru slow next to him._ _

__Temari looks at Yui. She had been asked this question before and her answer is as automatic as it is elegant: _get fucked_._ _

__“I usually leave after the shinobi clear out. Well into the night,” Temari says. She sees Yui’s eyebrows shoot up to her hairline._ _

__“You can leave right now if you’re finally taking an interest in a man,” she says. The tavern owner turns to Haru. “Three days, you said?”_ _

__Haru nods, shocked into a rare silence._ _

__“Ayatori, you’re off for the next three days.”_ _

__“That was brutal,” Shikamaru says, pinching the bridge of his nose, after they’re outside. They’d both silently scrambled out. Their speed was due to embarrassment, but they had no illusions about what it looked like to everyone else._ _

__“I’m never going to hear the end of it,” she agrees._ _

__They walk east towards her house in an uncomfortable silence. She hears him inhale like he’s going to say something, but he remains silent. He does it again and again. She decides to ignore it. If he has something to say, he will say it. They approach her home, and she thinks about the reality of her situation._ _

__It seems as though someone has increased the resolution of her world: her cottage, those deadly flowers, the mix of pebbles, sand, and fishbone underfoot. The salt on the wooden floor. The salt on her lips. The salt on his lips._ _

__She fishes for her key, somewhere in her breast wrappings. Shikamaru is looking at the sea, out of respect, she assumes, and she studies the umber of his eyes. She hasn’t been looking at the lock, and he glances down at her hands, where the key continually misses the keyhole. He raises an eyebrow, and she finally manages to open the door under what feels like incredible scrutiny._ _

__There’s a new, albeit thin, layer of salt on everything. And for the first time ever, she thinks she might miss this goddamn salt someday._ _


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you ever get used to the smell?” Shikamaru asks, looking out of her window. 

“It’s tilapia. A freshwater fish, slowly being poisoned by its environment. Sometimes the salinity goes up a percentage or two in one part of the sea or another and they die en masse,” she says, before realizing that she hadn’t actually answered the question. “All of that is to say no. But sometimes it’s not so bad.” 

“It’s amazing the fish can survive at all,” he says. 

“You can endure just about anything if you have no other choice,” she answers, staring at the sea. It has begun to dry up, leaving toxic mud that birds get stuck in and succumb to. She and Yui had been keeping track of how far the shoreline had been receding, and she wonders if there will be a sea here at all when she is allowed to leave. She imagines herself with creases in the corners of her eyes, silver mixed in with the gold of her hair, gravity pulling her skin to the earth, still staring out of this window, looking at a crater where the sea once was. Rasa, older than dirt, still on his throne. 

“Sometimes I think I’ll never be free,” she says, and it’s the most unguarded he has ever seen her. Again, he wonders: does speaking a thing give it power or take its power away? 

He doesn’t know what to say, so he puts a hand on her shoulder. They continue to stare at the noxious sea. Sometimes you don’t need to say anything. Sometimes it’s enough to just be there.

________

“Do you want to drink this?” Shikamaru asks, the bottle of shōchū in his hand. 

“You don’t think it’s in bad taste to drink someone’s expensive liquor after you kill him?” Temari responds, but she already has cups in her hand. 

“I wouldn’t feel too bad. Name a crime against humanity, and the target had done it.” 

“Bad guy,” she says, pouring shōchū into his cup and waiting expectantly for him to do the same for hers. He does, and they raise their glasses at the same time. “Did you not confiscate it, though? Do you not need it as evidence?” 

“I’m not going to court martial him for being a fucking idiot. It’s too much paperwork.” 

“You know, this is what I mean about you telling your wife someday,” she says, and hears him choke.

“I don’t think I’d talk about missions with whoever I end up marrying,” he answers when he’s done coughing.

“Oh no? Why is that?” Temari asks, and he blames her entirely for drawing this much information out of him. It’s her soothing voice, her ease everywhere she goes. He’d be telling her anything if she kept talking to him like this. He resents her for it, but not enough to leave. 

And now he has to think about his answer. He’s been trying to date civilians. Kunoichi are too troublesome. They always know when you’re lying, for one thing. They’re all friends with each other, for another. He’d once turned a corner in the Hokage’s office after a boring date and seen the woman whispering to another. They had giggled as he passed, and he didn’t much care for it. He wants to keep work in one box, his love life in another. He doesn’t want spillover. He doesn’t want mess. 

But for some reason, he feels foolish as he says, “I’ve been looking for a civilian woman. And you can’t talk about what we do to civilians.” 

He realizes he’s drained his cup and offers it to Temari, who pours again. The action feels natural, and he refills her cup as well. 

“I have been a civilian for five years. They aren’t the faint of heart you seem to believe they are,” she says. 

He snorts. “You are no civilian.” 

“What do you call someone who works in a tavern in a town with a population of twelve?” 

“That many?” Shikamaru says, dodging the shoe she throws at him. 

Then, seriously, he says, “You’ve started moving like a civilian when you’re in public, but it’s only an act. You didn’t knock on my door last night, Temari. It’s like you just appeared. I don’t know any civilians who can do that.” 

“You do now,” she says, and he rolls his eyes. He decides it’s too much work to argue. He had seen the careful way she’d looked around her tavern. He saw how she moved in private, with precision that only ninja possess. Things don’t just stop being what they are. He could use his kunai like a trowel but that wouldn’t make it any less deadly in his hands.

“What about you? Your boss said you didn’t get out much,” he says, and he can feel heat in his ears. It can easily be excused by the alcohol, though. 

“I appreciate the euphemism,” she says. Her laugh is silvery, and she finishes her drink. He refills it without a second thought. “At first, I didn’t want to be alone with any shinobi in case of an ambush. But I think I’ve been forgotten about. No one is looking for me anymore. Now I just think, what’s the point?” 

“Gratification?” Shikamaru suggests. The liquor is making him bold. He wouldn’t have said it two drinks ago. He doesn’t know how many times Temari has refilled his cup for him and he for her. It couldn’t have been too many, the sun just now setting. The bottle is still relatively full. Perhaps he’s making excuses. 

“I don’t think I’m the type who’d feel very gratified, fucking someone who thinks my name is Ayatori, who thinks I don’t know the first thing about the shinobi world, who I’ll never see again.” 

They’d been dancing around it. Her bluntness sends a shock to his belly, and he feels his scalp prickling. He wants to avert his eyes. Instead, he leans closer. 

“What type are you, then?” 

“Out here? I’m a do-it-yourself kind of lady.” She’s inches from his face, and he doesn’t register her clever response. He smells her breath, the liquor and something under it that’s sweet. Something he’d like to taste. His eyes lower to the pink of her lips, and he all but flies away from her, terrified of what he’d do next if the proximity remained that way. He lets her words sink in and laughs, but there’s a nervous edge to it. 

“So, how do these work? Would I just have to eat one and die, or…?” Shikamaru asks, pointing at the oleanders on the table. He’s trying to change the subject. 

“I wouldn’t know,” she answers evenly. 

“Of course,” he says, thinking carefully. “I always knew that story wasn’t true.” 

“What tipped you off?” Temari jokes. 

“I’m sure no one who knew you believed it,” he says. His voice is softer than usual, like he’s trying to comfort her. 

“I was thinking about that today. The thing is, I don’t see the difference between that and what I used to do. I used to be savage. I was an angry kid who wanted to tear the world in two. At first I thought, _Poison? Why would I want to watch people vomit and sweat and shit until they die?_ and then I remembered how Gaara and I used to delight in seeing blood and tendons and grey matter.” 

Shikamaru watches her, remembering what he saw on the shoreline that morning. She is at once a coiled viper and a supplicant. Here are her fangs, her venom. Look at how deep she can sink her teeth into you. Look at all that she has bitten. And look at how sorry she is for it. 

“You were a kid. You only knew what Rasa and your sensei told you. Do you blame a child soldier for the war itself?” Shikamaru asks. His hands are together in his signature thinking position. 

“Why don’t we ask the kid on your team?” Temari answers, so fast that he knows she’d been thinking about it all day. He winces. 

“A lot of my comrades would say that they were around his age when they fought in the war. I’ve always thought that was bullshit, though. How can we build a better future and resent our children for having it easier than us at the same time?” 

It’s his words that cause her to lean forwards, and she doesn’t realize what she’s going to do until it’s already done. Her lips brush against his, quickly, almost diffidently, and she pulls away like she is surprised at herself. 

His heart pumps harder than a bird’s wingbeat against the wind, faster than it goes when he takes off in a dead sprint. His face is serious, and he looks at her. He wants to say, Do you know what you’ve done? He feels that madness dragging him in, and he tries to ground himself. But when he does, he finds the madness to be boundless, and there is nothing but her. So he does the only thing he can do, and presses himself against her. 

“Is this okay?” Shikamaru hears himself whisper shakily. 

“It is,” she says. 

They slide against one another, clumsily at first and then less so. Neither of them have done this before. But there is something comforting in that, in there being no wrong answers. It’s something humans have done since humans have existed. Temari unfurls, comes apart, comes back together. She starts to say his name and he kisses it out of her mouth. 

He rests his chin on the top of her head when it’s over. Her cheek is against his chest, listening to the steady drum of his heart. They had both trembled, they had both seen white, both came away panting and flushed and heavy-lidded. 

“There are no florists in Suna,” he says quietly. 

“What?” Temari says, surprised by his sudden statement. 

“You asked what tipped me off that you were innocent. There are no florists in Suna. There’s a little old lady who sells succulents, and there’s an arboriculturist who talked my ear off about shrubbery. Worst afternoon of my life, by the way, but there’s no florists. It’s too expensive to transport fresh flowers regularly.” 

“You conducted an investigation?” she laughs.

“I kept seeing holes in the story and got curious. It was….annoying,” he answers. He leaves out the part where he bribed Ino to provide a list of all the florists and horticulturists in Wind country. It shows too many of his cards. As if he hadn’t already laid them all down on the table.

“No fucking florist? Who the hell issued the press release?” Temari says.

Shikamaru chuckles. “You know, our massacres born out of corruption and scandal are solid over in Konoha. You remember that whole Uchiha thing? Flawless.” 

“You’re right. My mistake was living in a village that couldn’t competently frame an innocent person.”

“I mean, you could ask for amnesty from Lord Sixth,” he says, and as soon as it comes out of his mouth he is ashamed at the greenness of the idea. What other desperate, stupid, aching things could he say? _Let’s run away together,_ or _Let’s upend our entire lives because I’m selfish and want to continue fucking you,_ or _Lets put you in a wig and fake beard and parade you around as my long-lost cousin_. 

She laughs. “Yes, and when he agrees I’ll wear an eyepatch and grow a mustache and tend to the Nara compound as your family’s new gardener for a cover.” It’s oddly close to what he’d just been thinking and he can’t decide if he is pleased or perturbed.

“There _was_ a surplus in the budget this year. I was planning on using it to build a research facility, but a mustachioed gardener with bad depth perception and inexplicably large breasts seems like a better investment,” he says easily. He is lazily running circles on her back with his fingers and feels her stiffen. 

She sits up, looks at him. He realizes that she doesn’t know about his father’s passing. She has no idea that he is the head of the clan. And Shikaku and Temari had known each other. It’s strange, how all of that feels like a different life to him. Temari and her siblings, sitting across from his father in a diplomatic meeting. It feels like the setup of a bad joke: _An S-class criminal, a jinchuriki, a puppeteer, and your dad walk into a bar…._

“Shikaku died in the war,” he offers as an answer to the question in her eyes, twisting his mouth a little but not giving away too much emotion. 

“He was a good man. I wish I’d known sooner.” 

“He died honorably. Everyone told me for weeks after what a hero he had been. How well I’d spoken at the funeral. How proud he must have been of me.” 

She laughs, but it’s not a kind sound. “I don’t know why people always approach the most bereaved and tell them that they’re doing a great job. They’ve all lost comrades, too. Don’t they know that it’s so--so--” 

He says “troublesome,” just as she says “tiresome.” He pulls her back to his chest, tightens his grip. It’s not late at night, but he likes to sleep and he is finding that he likes a warm body against him and he falls asleep with less trouble than usual, his mouth pressed to the crown of her head.

________

“Didn’t hear you come in last night,” he hears as he rummages through his things at the inn. If he just checked out and brought his entire pack to Temari’s, would that be presumptuous? It’s not like it’s _his_ money paying for the bedroom. It was built into the budget of the mission. And Haru is watching him. The decision is made to leave his belongings here, if only to avoid the inevitable gibes Haru would lob at him. 

“You sound like my mother,” he says, not interested in discussing his sex life with anyone. 

“So, you like a girl,” Haru says, leaning in the doorframe of Shikamaru’s room at the inn. “Never seen you take an interest in a civilian while on a mission before.” 

“We aren’t on a mission right now, we’re taking a mandatory rest break,” Shikamaru answers. He opens a scroll on his bed and pulls several scrolls from it. Haru rolls his eyes. Of course his boss has a scroll for carrying scrolls. He picks one, shoving the rest away.

“Doesn’t seem like you’re doing a lot of resting, Boss,” Haru says suggestively. When Shikamaru ignores him, he continues. “I’ve never seen you take an interest in a girl like this back in Konoha, either.” 

“And you never will,” Shikarmaru says. 

“You mean I get to be a part of your ‘the one who got away,’ story?” Haru jokes. 

He pauses for a second, like he’s considering it. Instead of answering, he walks out of the room and Haru follows behind him. 

“Never would have pegged you for a romantic,” Haru says.

“I’m not,” Shikamaru answers, rolling his eyes. 

“What’s in that scroll? Do you have a scroll for entertaining girls? Roses? Strawberries? Prophylactics?” 

“Books,” he says. “She’s read all the books in town.” 

“God, this place is depressing.” 

Shikamaru doesn’t answer, and picks up the pace. He sees her in the distance and there’s something disarming about the way she interacts so purposefully with the world. But she tilts her head, and he knows she’s heard them, though it’s an impressive distance even for a jōnin. He shouldn’t be surprised. Wouldn’t he be hyper-vigilant if he were in her situation? 

“And you’re acting weird! Over a girl who’s read all eight books in the shittiest village in the world. This place is so polluted, I think I’m growing a third nipple.” 

“I’d advise you to stop talking,” Shikamaru says, clenching his jaw. 

“She’s hot, I’ll give you that,” he says. 

“You’re going to follow me all the way to her?” Shikamaru bites out, his patience running thin. 

“I want to know who my favorite team captain is getting into bed with,” Haru answers, and Shikamaru looks at him disbelievingly. So he adds, “I’m fucking bored! There’s nothing to do here.” 

They are close enough that a civilian could hear, and finally his subordinate is quiet. Temari looks over her shoulder. She’s the Cruelest Kunoichi that Shikamaru always lusted over when her eyes land on Haru. 

“Go away,” she says to his subordinate. Her voice is as commanding as Shikamaru has ever heard it, and all three syllables wield immense power. Some leaders are born with an innate ability to move mountains with their voice. Temari had been such a leader in her previous life, and he wonders if this is the first time she’s used this tone here. Haru skitters away, surprise flashing in his eyes, and she leads Shikamaru into her home. 

He is pleased to be in the company of such casual power, as though it makes him powerful by association. It’s not a feeling he is used to, having relied on his intellect and not on others his whole life. He likes that she can hold her own; she succeeded in getting rid of Haru where he did not. 

“You’re scary,” he says fondly, placing a hand on her hip. 

She smiles at him, her incisors gleaming. A muscle placed a little differently, and she might be baring her teeth. He is reminded that she had walked a fine line between deadly and beautiful once. The oleanders suddenly seem quite appropriate.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “my darling, reckless friends! You who ventured down to the House of Death alive, doomed to die twice over—others die just once…., tomorrow at daybreak, you must sail.” Homer, The Odyssey. 12.22-24; 27

It is two days more until he leaves. During the days, she leads him through the more interesting parts of the desert--the skeletons of the crumbling, abandoned buildings, the visible fault line. He catches her up on what she’s missed, things her brothers hadn’t told her over the years. They tangle themselves around each other at night. 

“The Kazekage really threw you to the wolves,” Shikamaru says. It’s the night before he must leave, and her hands are on his chest, her chin resting atop her hands. Her eyes are bright, and she’s not offended by his comment. If there is one thing Shikamaru has learned over the last few days, it is that Temari does not feel the least bit sorry for herself. 

The smile she gives him. It is wicked, quick. It makes his heart race and his face flush. “The wolves are better company, it turns out.” 

The morning comes too quickly, but they had known it would. Holding on to one another was like trying to keep sand from slipping between your fingers. 

She doesn’t kiss him when he leaves. The sun is rising and already the heat makes her yukata stick to her skin. She raises her hand to touch his cheek and he leans his face into it and closes his eyes. 

“You should leave at noon, so the sun will be on your back and not in your eyes,” she says. His team is traveling east, after all. 

“It’ll be hottest then, and it’ll add an extra night to our journey.” 

She shrugs. “Maybe I’m just trying to keep you around a little while longer.” 

He turns his face and presses his lips to her fingers. 

He does not say that he’ll wait for her. He doesn’t tell her that he loves her. Why twist the knife? Wouldn’t it be cruel to say it? And there’s the answer to the question he’d been asking since he had arrived. It doesn’t matter whether he speaks it or not: a thing’s power exists regardless of what he does. If he says he loves her, if he doesn’t, does it change a single thing? Where he must go, she can’t follow. Where she lives, he can’t stay. They are bound by more than each other in this great, big, merciless world. He had gotten three days. Some people don’t get even that. 

He feels his eyes stinging. What right does he have to cry? Temari is a bird pinioned, and he is the one leaving her.

“It’s dusty this morning,” he says, and he is choking on the unfairness, on the brevity, on the precariousness of it all. She runs a thumb over his cheekbone, catching the moisture that cuts a line along his skin before it is noticeable. 

“The dust has been bothering me, as well,” she agrees. Yes, it is the dust only that causes the tears brimming in her eyes and lump in her throat.

He nods and they both hear his team approaching. Without another word, he turns away and sprints into the distance. His team follows, and she watches them. The glare from the sun burns her eyes but she does not look away until they disappear on the horizon. 

When she returns to her house, the single room feels too big. It’s quiet, disconcertingly so, and for the first time in years, she feels lonely. 

She thinks herself a waystation. Shikamaru will move on, tend to his duties. Get married, have children. She wonders what spot she will occupy in his mind. Will he think of these days as a fun tryst? A peculiar dalliance that only a man in his twenties could have? Will he pity her, a woman with so much potential cast away--thrown to the wolves, as he’d said the night before--when he remembers her? She thinks of the star-crossed nature of their meeting, considers the thousands of variables that caused their existences to dip next to one another so briefly, and realizes that she does not know what place he will occupy in her mind either.

________

Ino enters Shikamaru’s office without knocking. 

“What’s this I hear about you shacking up with a bartender in the middle of nowhere?” 

“I shacked up with a bartender in the middle of nowhere,” Shikamaru deadpans, already swearing vengeance on Haru in his mind. He’ll have Kakashi assign him to only D-rank missions. Make him chase cats and paint fences for a month. 

“That guy on your team, Haru, right? He said he’d never seen you this excited about anything. Except maybe shogi.” 

Ino sits in front of him, making it clear that she has no intention to leave any time soon. Shikamaru clenches his jaw in annoyance. 

“You know, people do long-distance all the time these days,” she says. “Look at Choji.” 

He rakes his fingers through the hair closest to his scalp. “What do I have to do to get you to drop it?”

“Oh, come on, Shikamaru. What was she like?” 

“ _Stop,_ ” he answers. 

“You know, nothing’s stopping me from going over to Kakashi’s office and saying that you need to be evaluated, too. Then I wouldn’t have to ask, I could just see for myself.” 

“You wouldn’t,” he says, glaring at her. 

“I absolutely would,” she answers, crossing her arms. It is Ino’s job to get answers out of people, true. But it is Shikamaru’s specialty to sidestep Ino. He’d carefully kept her prying eyes out of his love life for years--not that there was much to know. 

“You’d go all the way to the Hokage just to extract memories of me fucking some bossy woman in Wind county?” 

“Shikamaru and the bossy bartender,” Ino said, smiling like she’d gained any ground at all. Like he hadn’t just planted that adjective in there for this exact reason, to make her feel like she’s won without coming away with any useful information at all. “Are you going to see her again?”

“No.” 

“Why not?” 

“Hmm,” he begins, feigning deep thought. “It’s a five day journey to her village, it’s so remote that they don’t even get mail, let alone have the technology we have in Konoha for communication. She’s a civilian so anything involving jutsus is out. Pick a reason.”

The real reason is that it is too risky. He’s a genius, afterall, and he could figure out a way around all those aforementioned obstacles. But there is a slim chance in every scenario of Temari being caught. And Temari’s life isn’t something he’s willing to gamble with. 

“Are you going to look for a local bossy girl?” 

“No,” he answers, and then adds, “I think I’m done with dating, actually.” 

At this, Ino lets out a surprised laugh. “You’re done?” she repeats. 

It’s a shame, coming to this conclusion. He had liked the idea of a wife, a civilian who didn’t have missions herself to go on. He’d had his heart set on this for about a year now. He would imagine some faceless woman, smart enough to manage the Nara estate on her own if need be, meek enough that she didn’t harp on him or nag. She’d have dinner ready when he came home, keep the house tidy and dusted, fuck him often and enthusiastically. She would be well-read so as to be entertaining at gatherings, pretty but not strikingly so. The kind of wife a politician might have. 

Such a woman doesn’t exist, and now his fantasies of this wife he’d imagined feel profoundly wrong. He’s ashamed, yes, of what the fantasies reveal about him: that he is lazy, both physically and emotionally, and could probably focus more energy into not being such a fucking sexist. But more than that, he doesn’t want a wife if it’s not Temari. 

And when he thinks about a life with Temari, the life that will never be, he thinks not about what kind of wife Temari might be, but of the kind of husband he might be to her. He thinks he’d be devoted to her. Uxorious, even. So to go out and court some girl feels first and foremost like a betrayal, though he knows Temari likely wouldn’t begrudge him for living his life. It feels next like a lie. Sure, he _could_ take some woman to dinner, show her his deer. That was the easiest way to impress a civilian girl, he had found. They fucking loved his deer. He could kiss this woman, fuck her, even, but he wouldn’t like her by any stretch of the imagination. It had been over for him the second Temari’s lips had grazed his. Maybe even before that. 

“Yeah, I’m done,” he confirms.

________

Two weeks after he has gone, she misses her period. She does not notice. Her body feels tender and soft and she craves food yet cannot stomach it, and believes herself ill at first. She notices, after an embarrassing amount of time, that her period has not come and her illness has not subsided and she has grown softer still. 

Her mouth is in a hard line and she looks like a lioness pacing the length of her enclosure as she walks back and forth along the beach. She is tense, all shoulders. I should have known this would happen, she thinks in consternation, though the likelihood was slim. She counts the days back and realizes she had been ovulating at the time. That means little. Some couples try for years to conceive and don’t succeed. They’d fucked a total of, what? Four times? Five? 

“All it takes is once,” Yui says when Temari informs her boss of her predicament. Temari doesn’t want to hear it.

“The odds are against a viable pregnancy from the start,” she says. She’s moving too quickly around the tavern for a civilian and she’s too panicked to realize. If Yui notices, she says nothing of it. Yui is good at minding her own business that way. “Sperm cells can’t really survive in an acidic environment, and a sperm cell meeting an egg? And that egg implanting on the uterine wall? The body not rejecting it? Infinitesimally low.” 

“And yet people are born all the time,” Yui drawls, and Temari shoots her a look.

“You’re no use,” she says, and stalks out.

There were plenty of things she could do to get rid of this inconvenience. It’s something girls are taught during their training, how a kunoichi could stop an unplanned pregnancy. She could mix a medicinal tea and have the whole thing taken care of within a week.

She gathers herbs robotically; it’s a laborious task and there’s not a bounty of ingredients to choose from, but luckily “emmenagogues” (a euphemism she’d been taught as a girl--somehow “abortifacients” unsettled people) exist everywhere, even in her desolate corner of the world. It’s a wonder how anyone is born, she thinks, with all that exists to flush the clump of cells forming in her uterus out of her. 

She digs up roots, sweating from a mix of the hot sun, the exertion, and the nausea she has been experiencing. She cleans the plants and places them on her table, thinking again how empty her house feels. She cuts the root of one plant, boils the leaves of another. It has been so quiet since Shikamaru left. She stops working, and runs a hand, fingers splayed, over her belly. She isn’t showing, of course. 

Her first thought is that she is being selfish. How could she entertain the idea of bringing a child into this world of exile?

So she continues to work and when she is done, she stares steadfast at the tea she has created. The process to terminate the pregnancy is a regimen, and she would have to drink it twice a day for a week at least. 

So very little in her life has been in her control, and now she is faced with a decision that is entirely hers. The idea of having a choice is a novelty. She is almost charmed by the concept of choosing, of weighing one option against the other. She had not chosen the man who she had been promised to long ago. She had not chosen to leave Suna. She had not chosen to come here. But she had chosen Shikamaru, or felt that she had. And now she could choose to have a child.

She turns the outcomes over in her mind. Does she choose change, with its frightening unknowability, or stasis, which is comfortable but boring? And can she live with the permanence of her decision either way? In the end, she makes what she has deemed to be the most selfish choice of the two and does not drink the tea. 

For the next month, she wakes almost every night in a cold sweat, having dreamt that she has been found out and arrested. They take away her child, give it to Rasa to raise. She cannot think of a worse fate for her baby. As she awaits her execution in these dreams, she imagines a boy, cool like Shikamaru but with a prettier face, standing with a bloodied kunai over a target. He is young, as young as she had been when she had gone on her first assassination mission. She sees her own green eyes in his face, her own smile dance on the boy’s lips as he watches blood gush out of the target’s jugular vein. 

“No!” she screams, loud enough to wake herself up. But out of the din comes nothing; no soldiers collect her. She is, save for the thing growing inside her, utterly alone once again.

**Author's Note:**

> The details on concubinage are more Chinese in origin than Japanese. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Also, the sea is based on the Salton Sea in California.


End file.
